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My eventful weekend
 

So as some of you may know I was on the NZ tv show good morning (still waiting on link)and had wcs NZ. This is going to be my write up on how the weekend went. Enjoy my wall of text ^_^

So the start of my weekend started at 4am on Friday with my flight to Auckland. Going to sleep at 10pm i thought I'd get a decent amount of sleep and be able to function well the next day. How wrong I was. Ended up lying in bed not sleeping until like 2am. So 2 hours sleep and getting on a flight with Matty aka TheGoonSquad that I couldn't manage to sleep on. This lead to me saying the whole weekend to Byron who organised the flights that anything dumb or bad I do is on those 5am flights.

First up in Auckland once we had arrived and meet up with Mike who was running his first event in WCS NZ and his girlfriend Izzy who was driving us all weekend(and almost killed us). They were taking us to the first assignment of the weekend, the tv interview. We arrived at TVNZ at like 9am and meet the blizzard representative(can't remmeber excat role atm but hes awesome) PJ Russel. We were put into the waiting room that had Ashley from the filming archon waiting for us and the old NZ TV children's actor Jason "Farty" Farfoe (or something no idea with how to spell last name). Also lurking around was the guy know on NZ TV as 'That Guy'. Anyway so we were at the studio and we had one of the research people give PJ a list of questions we could think over the answer to such as "how many hours do you play a day?" and "what do your parents think about you playing so much?". We then got shoved into a room one by one for make up. Which was basically a brush thing shoved on your face and being tickled all over your face so your face showed up better or something.

So after what felt like a long time we were ushered into the room and were set up on the couch while they were doing the news. This was really sure real as the interviewers were so chilled before air just checking facebook and texting. Then next thing I know the guy who was running the show was counting them in and our interview had begun. I won't go into detail on the interview as the link should be available shortly and no matter what i say it won't do the interview justice. Also you can have more fun laughing at me. What I will say is the interviewers asked good basic questions and between myself Matty (TheGoonSquad) and PJ we really got a lot of the "hidden" scene of sc2 across and even got a few more people to turn up at WCS NZ just from seeing us.

the rest of a sleepy day

The rest of the Day was passed by in tired practice and meeting the Iris guys when they came up and interviews with the filming archon. The evening Interviews at the gamer house we were all staying at were pretty cool and got a really good mindset into how everyone was looking at the tournament and how they wanted to be viewed. I personally always want to be under rated as I feel there's less pressure and at my first event were theres a lot of people and stage matches i didn't want extra pressure was how I went about my interview with Matty. That and trying to boost Matty's profile a bit as he is really underrated and a very nice guy.

WCS NZ (my experience and my match write ups)

So this was easily bigger than the other lan i had gone up for a month ago. The tournament format was double elimination for the 8 people who passed the first two stages. I was ranked 5th after losing to IrisAnother 2-1 in my stage 2 v This was huge the tournament was meant to start at 10am and we got underway at about 11 after fixing issues like sun glare and freezing. My first match was vs IrisKowi v. As some of you may know v has always been my archielles heel in my tournament play. All my games but me vs SIN were in the Boxing ring (the stage). Also when it was up streamed :P.

Game 1 Round 1 upper bracket on Shakuras plateau
I was the 5 o'clock position Kowi the 11. The game started with Kowi doing a zealot 2 stalker push with probe and expanding behind it. I was doing a 7 stalker rush that with my cold hands and first game fail syndrome i always seem to have managed to not realise after microing and losing the first stalker that my rally point wasn't rallying onto my units. I failed so hard not realising that i had to pull probes to hold off the attack. I expanded right after holding the pressure and pushed to see what he was doing (i had the robo down in the fight). By the time i saw the expand i started thinking about the next game. I knew i didn't have any way to win this so tryed to do some damage while expanding. didn't work his counter with blink and 8 gate immortal was too much for me to hold. Put that one down to cold hands nerves and 1st game syndrome.

Game 2 Round 1 upper bracket on Cloud kingdom
I'm not going to do too much detail on this game apart from say of the matches Hamish and I played we both thought this was the best one and Flamga is going to cast it so i will link the cast when its up.

Game 3 Round 1 upper bracket on tda
micro war he won what else can i say? :P

Me vs Sin
So after playing Kowi i fell to the lower bracket right away. Not really were i wanted to be but you know shit happens. So my first round in the lower was vs Sin the weakest player there who was 8th seed and really got in as IrisFlaunt quit sc2 and Iris from what i understand. Sin first game on shak went for a 4 rax after 1 rax fe. i 20 nexused denyed his 4 rax and killed him pretty straight forward. game 2 on antigua can't ven remember think i went blink stalker was an annoying douchebag for a bit then killed him with colossus.

From here on I can link Vods of the games because the next game was myself vs IrisPetraues. Although what some of you don't know is the Iris Manager Navi came up before the match and said hay guys i think we should make this more interesting. He proposed to us that the loser should have to change thier sc2sea name to chobo_name. Pet agreed right away with confidence and so there was an extra stake on the line other than getting into the top 4 in double elimination. Also pet beat IrisAnother earlier 2-1 V. without further a do heres the replay
game 1 - http://www.twitch.tv/esportsnz/b/320077054 co casting is the awesome PJ
game 2 - http://www.twitch.tv/esportsnz/b/320078060
SPOILER : I did a wiggle at Pet for IrisAnother aka Jamie that the Filming archon has on camera

So the match that determined if i would go on to vs rumpletezer who is KnightLight a kiwi living in america was IrisKowi. The person who had beaten me 2-0 in the first round. I felt I could adjust to his style better now i knew how he liked to play. Here are the vods
game 1 - http://www.twitch.tv/esportsnz/b/320085229 rogue co casting
game 2 - http://www.twitch.tv/esportsnz/b/320085229

So that was me for WCS NZ came 4th which wasn't a bad place to come considering how good the NZ scene seem to be now with someone as good as Jamie aka Iris another being one of the first 2 players out. I felt I did well and yet was disappointed as I yet again failed at PvP and felt certain I could've beaten KnightLight for at least 2nd place if i could've beaten Kowi. The good thing was I learnt a lot off Kowi for PvP as we talked about the match up for about an hour later. also bracket link http://challonge.com/wcsnz_live

Would like to give a shoutout to SQL / aLt for helping me practice. But also to Mike for running this awesome tournament that i loved being competing in and to everone who read this :P
Sorry its so long peace ^_^



ALSO the filming archons clip for Blizzard on WCS NZ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y5xyNAxYyo with a wiggle in it